how big did ff11 area grow before and after all the expansion?

[Magis]

[QUOTE=Lexia;2934550]

I have to disagree with you. Personally, I spent so much time in every zone (except Windy areas) that I still vividly remember each one and it has been 6 years since I played XI. I spent time in both eastern and western altepa leveling many jobs. I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense to compare XI with XIV because the open world was used for everything. There were very few instances compared to XIV.

Wasn't Altepa also a major leveling area? Recall being there in the early level 30s I think?

The zone housed several NMS, entrance to underground open world dungeons, and Leveling camps as well as a few quest.

XI was NOT A QUEST DRIVEN GAME.

Honestly the zone has more reason to exist then alot of areas in XIV currently which have no purpose once the leveling quest are done.

Bingo. People are applying WoWs system and every game that copied it after to FFXIs more general world system. The game gave you a bunch of things to do in a zone, zones weren't just hubs for quests... Then to die after you completed them.

[Gyson]

Don't forget that on top of all the zones in FFXI, we had the option of hopping through a Cavernous Maw and traveling back in time to revisit many of the core zones during the Crystal War. I always thought that was a hoot.

[kyuven]

The zone housed several NMS, entrance to underground open world dungeons, and Leveling camps as well as a few quest.

XI was NOT A QUEST DRIVEN GAME.

Honestly the zone has more reason to exist then alot of areas in XIV currently which have no purpose once the leveling quest are done.

But let me ask.
What makes THAT zone special that couldn't be done by just making "Altepa Desert" rather than splitting it into two zones?
This was the mentality that Yoshida and co. adopted when they began trimming down the 1.0 zones, and it's one I wholeheartedly agree with. Denser, juicier zones rather than massive zones with repeating tiles and lots of nothing.


And if it wasn't a quest driven game, what was it? I mean, it had two different entries for "quests" and "missions," and you start doing quests really early. Why have two different entries and cutscenes if that's not the focus?
I mean really, even SE didn't appear to know what they wanted to do with it. Take a look at those old patch notes.

This isn't WoW logic either. Trimming the fat in oversized games had been going on for years prior to WoW. Player complaints about "large empty fields of nothing" had been going on for a long time. Even EQ1 introduced fast travel options in 2003 that made getting around a lot easier. It was criticized at the time (and still is by people who don't remember dying repeatedly trying to get around) but turned into an industry standard.
Even FFXI started to move into the direction of smaller, meatier zones eventually, after ToAU.

[erish]

But let me ask.
What makes THAT zone special that couldn't be done by just making "Altepa Desert"

your overthinking this its really obvious, ps2 limitations. Both zones are massive by any mmo standards that and they came out in what 2004, i mean is this really a disscusion point really?

[Warlyx]

your overthinking this its really obvious, ps2 limitations. Both zones are massive by any mmo standards that and they came out in what 2004, i mean is this really a disscusion point really?

wester was for low lvls had an oasis the teleport crystal and acess to korroloka , mobs from 30-45 ish , and easter was for 50-65 , revelation rock was awesome :3 ,the antican race lived there (quicksand caves) , Titan crystal is here too, + rabao city and access to kuftal tunnel , both zones served a purpouse , and yeah Ps2 limitations.

[Nalien]

wester was for low lvls had an oasis the teleport crystal and acess to korroloka , mobs from 30-45 ish , and easter was for 50-65 , revelation rock was awesome :3 ,the antican race lived there (quicksand caves) , Titan crystal is here too, + rabao city and access to kuftal tunnel , both zones served a purpouse , and yeah Ps2 limitations.

Both served a purpose, but my biggest lingering issue with XIs zones is that most of the zone didn't. A lot of it was just empty space that had no purpose outside extending travel time. Mark on any XI map the areas which were actually frequented, it's a lot of open unused space for the majority. That was one of the major things Abyssea made me realize, and probably the only thing Abyssea did right IMO. Places like La Theine were suddenly bursting with content.

Despite that XI still made better use of its zones than XIV though, because XIV just plainly doesn't really use them once you've hit the cap. That's the real issue I think people should be focusing on, rather than just begging for (and actually getting) bigger zones. The problem with XIVs zones isn't their size, it's the utter lack of quality endgame content in them. Hunts bombed. Treasure Maps are "cute" at best. What this game needs is not bigger zones, it is quality open world content which isn't dead the moment you stop needing EXP (not that I mean to imply FATEs are "quality content").

[Iromi]

And if it wasn't a quest driven game, what was it?

Well, lets see here..haha. In the zones..you could...
Hunt NM
Hunt HNM
Do Campaign
Farm monsters for gil items or equipment
Pop your own NM at the ??? with a PT/Alliance
There was always EXP parties going on
Use the monsters to level up your skills/evasion/etc

I may be forgetting things..but FFXI used zones for MUCH more then just quests.

[Magis]

Both served a purpose, but my biggest lingering issue with XIs zones is that most of the zone didn't.

While I don't think there was a zone that didn't have a purpose for something, you are looking at it wrong. You are thinking "this zone should exist to deliver this content". The way the game was designed was "this zone should exist because this is how Vana'diel exists". It was world building, everything was built to make the world seem alive. Shops closed on certain days, ferries/airships came in on a schedule (which operated in realtime), and every mob was effected by different factors and had different aggro types (undead aggroed by dying characters, dogs tracked scents, blind monsters aggroed by sound so you could walk around em).

Not so much in this game, where everything is basically some kind of content delivery system. When I see something interesting in the world (ie, the dead treant in South Shroud) I don't think "wow I wonder what the story behind that is", I think "some quest is going to use this as a marker".

To give an example... by FFXIV standards Korroloka Tunnel shouldn't exist because it didn't have some quest hub, or major quests. Except it HAS to exist because there needed to be a connection between Bastok and Altepa (going under the sea). It exists to give a reason why these two zones are connected. It builds the world up to be believable. FFXIV would do the opposite... it would just teleport you across the two zones. This breaks the flow though of how the world is laid out and shrinks it. Heck even existing zones are jarring due to your character doing massive jumps between regions when you zone (Mor Dhona to Coerthas, though I can let it slide due to short dev time for 2.0). That rarely happened in FFXI because the zonelines had some border to give the player the idea they were moving into another zone (a lot of time tunnels were used for this). There wasn't even a magical literal zone line, it just went straight to a loading screen so the devs had to put something there to give the player the idea they were entering a new area.

[Nalien]

While I don't think there was a zone that didn't have a purpose for something, you are looking at it wrong. You are thinking "this zone should exist to deliver this content". The way the game was designed was "this zone should exist because this is how Vana'diel exists". It was world building, everything was built to make the world seem alive. Shops closed on certain days, ferries/airships came in on a schedule (which operated in realtime), and every mob was effected by different factors and had different aggro types (undead aggroed by dying characters, dogs tracked scents, blind monsters aggroed by sound so you could walk around em).

I actually think the world building in XIV is superior, in a strictly zone-related sense (I'd love actual ferries and the like).

Eorzea feels lived in. You walk outside Ul'dah and it feels like you've walked out of a bustling city. You walk out of San d'Oria and it's wilderness. All the odd camps like Rabao were so isolated and I have zero sense NPCs did any travelling in Vana'diel. XIV has done a superb job of making a world which actually feels lived in, where as XI made a world you could live in, but felt like it had undergone an apocalypse as far as NPCs were concerned. That made sense for places like Tavnazia (and from what I've heard the new expansion location), but for all the other places? No. It was absurd. More so when Wings of the Goddess came around and we got glimpses of actual infrastructure outside of the city walls, and then are told that our Vana'diel is the hope filled future. Really? Their hopefully future is cowering behind their cities gates while wilderness takes over?

To give an example... by FFXIV standards Korroloka Tunnel shouldn't exist because it didn't have some quest hub, or major quests. Except it HAS to exist because there needed to be a connection between Bastok and Altepa (going under the sea). It exists to give a reason why these two zones are connected. It builds the world up to be believable. FFXIV would do the opposite... it would just teleport you across the two zones. This breaks the flow though of how the world is laid out and shrinks it. Heck even existing zones are jarring due to your character doing massive jumps between regions when you zone (Mor Dhona to Coerthas, though I can let it slide due to short dev time for 2.0). That rarely happened in FFXI because the zonelines had some border to give the player the idea they were moving into another zone (a lot of time tunnels were used for this). There wasn't even a magical literal zone line, it just went straight to a loading screen so the devs had to put something there to give the player the idea they were entering a new area.

XI and XIV do the exact same thing in this regard, to be perfectly honest. Both cut out the intermittent "zones". XIV actually does a better job of this in most cases. When I travel from North Shroud to Coerthas, it looks like I'm heading into snowy mountains. When I traveled from La Thiene to Valkrum Dunes? It looked like I was travelling to more of La Thiene but then the loading screen stops and suddenly I'm surrounded by sand? Yeeeeah....

XIV cuts a lot of the intermittent zones out because they have no purpose, but so did XI. You just wouldn't know because XI wasn't rebuilt to the point where you can actually tell that Coerthas Central Lowlands is missing. There should still have been a fairly large gap between places like La Thiene and Valkrum Dunes. The boat rides and various tunnels are the only thing XI got right in that regard. The only other thing XI did differently was not including the XII-homage zone lines because XII didn't even exist at the time...

[Maikal]

Ugh, seeing that gives me nightmarish flashbacks! :/